Vasquez: MAGA spending priorities ignore New Mexico's cost-of-living crisis

Rep. Gabe Vasquez stood in the desert outside El Paso and looked at what $75 billion in federal money had built: a makeshift prison where three people had already died. The facility, part of an Immigration and Customs Enforcement operation, held grandfathers and gardeners—the vast majority with no criminal records—separated from their families. This, Vasquez argues, is what the Trump administration and its Republican allies have chosen to do with American tax dollars while New Mexico families struggle to pay for gas, rent, health care, and utilities.

The congressman represents New Mexico's 2nd district, a sprawling region that includes Carlsbad, Alamogordo, Lordsburg, and the South Valley. He travels constantly through these communities, meeting with families and business owners, and the message he hears is consistent: working people are drowning. Gas prices have skyrocketed. Utility bills keep climbing. Rent is rising. Health care premiums have doubled. Yet federal spending priorities seem designed for a different America entirely.

Vasquez catalogs the choices he sees as reckless. Hundreds of millions of dollars went toward a ballroom with Italian marble floors for entertaining the wealthy. A $70 million luxury jet was purchased. A massive tax break for billionaires was negotiated at a Florida golf course. The Trump tax law passed by congressional Republicans last summer—marketed as the "One Big Beautiful Bill"—sent health care and food prices upward while the richest Americans received the largest tax cut in history. Over the next decade, Vasquez contends, these spending decisions will increase the national debt by more than $4 trillion.

The human cost extends beyond economics. Rural hospitals teeter on the edge of closure. Behavioral health services are desperately needed but unavailable. Farmers cannot find workers. Aging infrastructure crumbles in small cities and rural counties. The price of fuel limits how often people can travel and raises the cost of doing business. All of this, Vasquez argues, flows from decisions about where federal money goes.

The administration has also requested a massive increase in defense spending to fund what Vasquez calls a failed war in Iran. The United States is spending $1 billion per day on military operations there, he notes, while New Mexico residents want investments in roads and schools, fair wages, tax relief, and the ability to provide their families with a decent life. To pay for this spending, Republicans have cut food stamps, dismantled Medicaid, eliminated health care tax credits, and fired hundreds of thousands of government employees—all while allowing billionaires to profit from new, unregulated industries like prediction markets and government contracts awarded without competitive bidding.

Vasquez positions himself as one of the few remaining members of Congress willing to work across party lines. He has been working with both Democrats and Republicans to end the war, make smart investments in border security, and advance what he calls his Affordability Agenda—a concrete plan to reduce the cost of housing, health care, utility bills, child care, elder care, and food. He emphasizes that he has not used his congressional position to enrich himself, and he has watched politicians from both parties prioritize donor interests over constituent needs.

The core of his argument is straightforward: the choices being made are not inevitable, they are deliberate. Washington elites and leaders from both parties, he suggests, want working people to believe these problems are too complicated to solve. But Vasquez insists the solution is simple. Smart investments can bring down the cost of living, improve public safety, and keep America strong. The Trump administration and MAGA Republicans are simply choosing not to make those investments. That choice, he concludes, has to end.